Sunday, September 13, 2009

BLOG OF INTENT

The last few weeks have been too damn quiet on the business and boat front, so we started making some racket.

First we decided to get Isabella some new bottom paint. We're taking her to Bayliss, yes the powerboat, fish killing boatyard. She'll be one of only three sailboats to get pulled there. We're honored, but I have a bet with John about how bad the bottom will be after sitting in the water for five years. If she's 70+% covered in debris/barnacles, I buy dinner, and he buys for anything less than 70%. I promised not to cheat by diving down and scraping off barnacles. That's about as likely as me sticking my head in a bucket of bloodworms.

Next, I did another round of craigslist posting. Since craigslist only allow you to post an ad in ONE market, I have four logons with our four email addresses. I log in and out four times to place our ad in various markets up and down the coast, a clear violation of craigslist policy. (Craig, if you're reading this, please help a girl out. Actually, you wanna buy a boat?) Chip emailed all the prospects that were left hanging. No takers so far, but we've been offered to exchange a nice plot of land in New Hampshire.

On the business side, we still have several prospects that have neither made offers (I would have mentioned this earlier) nor officially dropped out, so I emailed all of them. (Actually, that's not true. I only emailed the ones I like.) I was stunned to hear back from one of them saying that even though they haven't been in touch since August 1st, they are preparing a letter of intent. Intent to what!?!? According to our lawyer it's the beginnings of an offer. Supposedly next week. Just noise? Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

I started a new blog to help Casey (and me) with French: Un mot a la fois (translation: one word at a time). I'm trying to get back up to speed (2nd grade level), and Casey's trying to live in French. Next up: Spanish. Some French and Spanish will allow us to tell people we don't understand them in the Caribbean, South America AND the Med.

We made our first re-purchase of a previous belonging: a heating pad. My old stomach pain was back the last few weeks, although I did avoid the emergency room this time. We've now got it mostly figured out -- and it's treatable and maybe even preventable.

Remember when I dropped my cell phone in the water while I was working on the boat? Chip did exactly the same thing this week. I asked him what it means. He said, "we're fumbling our communication." Eke.

Our 11th anniversary (we think) is next week, so we're headed to Ocracoke for four days to sleep, eat, walk on the beach and play cards. Next month we're headed once again to the Annapolis Sailboat Show to pretend we're cruisers. Plans. We're good at making plans.

… how people arrange their lives to go sailing full time? I sure did, because that was our goal. I scoured blogs and books and magazines...

why we're here

how do you arrange your life to live on a sailboat? we are constructing the answer, letter by letter. this is my daily log of each decision we face, each land tie we break, each footprint we make as we plod toward our dream: life on the water.